


Find somewhere the bad days / Don't come as often in this sad phase

by Emjen_Enla



Series: Prompted Works [48]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Christmas Presents, Dissociation, Episode: s04e02 Heathens, Estrangement, Family Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I am truly evil to answer this prompt with a fic like this, all angst no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27971405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla
Summary: The morning after John’s funeral they finally celebrate Christmas.Written for prompt 9 of the Peaky Blinders 12 Days Holiday Challenge: Fete.
Relationships: Ada Shelby & Tommy Shelby, John Shelby & Tommy Shelby
Series: Prompted Works [48]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366669
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: Peaky Blinders 12 Days Holiday Challenge 2020





	Find somewhere the bad days / Don't come as often in this sad phase

**Author's Note:**

> 9\. Fete
> 
> Title from “Chasing” by NF and Mikayla Sippel
> 
> Yes, I'm ignoring the order of the prompts. Why do you ask?

The morning after John’s funeral they finally celebrate Christmas.

Actually, celebrate is the wrong word. The morning after John’s funeral they finally put presents under the tree and open them. The morning after John’s funeral they make plans to have a Christmas dinner in Charlie’s Yard, but it is bravado, a show they put on for their enemies and their dubiously trustworthy new friends. It’s a statement. The Shelbys may be bruised, but they are not beaten. The time for grief has passed, now it’s time for war.

It’s all a lie: none of them feel like celebrating anything, let alone Christmas.

Still, appearances must be maintained, and it seems cruel not to let the children open their presents. Charlie never mentioned it, which Tommy thinks is a bit odd because Charlie hasn’t been able to speak of anything else for a solid month. Perhaps that’s unsurprising, though. Charlie might not remember the rest of the family or have ever seen a Romani funeral before, but he’s a smart kid, plenty smart enough to figure out that someone’s died.

Tommy had wanted to protect Charlie from the reality of death. That is just one of the many, many things he’s failed at.

Tommy isn’t sure who remembers that they should probably open presents. He thinks maybe it was Ada. Or Linda. It definitely was not him, and or Arthur or Finn. Michael’s in the hospital, and Polly is strung out on whiskey and the phenobarb tablets Tommy’s been carrying around in his coat since Ada handed them to him—he’s vaguely aware that he should probably wean her off of them, but he hasn’t had the mental space for it so he’s just been giving them to her whenever she swallows her pride enough to ask.

The present unwrapping is rather subdued. Charlie and Karl are the only ones who get into it and even they can’t quite shake the heavy pall of grief that has settled over Watery Lane. Tommy is almost thankful that Esme took the kids and left because he didn’t get gifts for any of the family but Ada, Karl and Michael. He’s able to repurpose one of the packages he was going to give to Charlie for little Billy, but he’d never be able to come up with enough gifts for John and Esme’s whole lot. Of course, he has no gifts for the adults either, but that’s less conspicuous given no one got him anything either. He’s unsurprised and tells himself that means he doesn’t care.

Afterwards Ada finds him smoking in the kitchen to get away from the deafening silence that grips the rest of the family whenever he’s around—he doesn’t care, he _doesn’t_. He doesn’t notice her come in and almost jumps when she puts a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” he asks, trying to hide that she startled him.

“Are you alright?” she asks, still touching him. “You’ve been very quiet.”

“I’m fine,” he says, stepping away.

“You’re sure?” she prods, a worried frown twisting her lips.

“Of course, I’m sure,” he snaps. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She holds up her hands in surrender. “Just making sure.”

If he’s being honest—something which he has no intentions of being—he feels numb. He hasn’t felt a thing since they got news of John’s death. He’s wrapped in a soft, unending numbness, sort of like when your vision goes blurry if you stare at something for too long without blinking. Vaguely, he’s aware that he hasn’t slept since Christmas Eve and he logically knows that he must be exhausted but he feels wide awake. He thinks he might have a headache too and he’s been getting the little visual distortions he gets before a migraine since yesterday, but he can’t really feel anything. He hopes it stays that way; he doesn’t have time for a migraine.

“Do you want to talk, Tom?” Ada ventures.

“Talk about what?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Ada says in a tone of voice that suggests he shouldn’t have had to ask. “John?”

Tommy inhales a lungful of smoke to stall. Something strange happens to him whenever he tries to think about John. His brain skips and curves, avoiding the truth of what happened like you would avoid a half-submerged tree while guiding a narrowboat down the canal. It’s like some subconscious part of him believes that if he just doesn’t acknowledge what happened it won’t be real. Perhaps it’s even working; it doesn’t feel like John’s gone any more than it did that time in France when he went over the top and didn’t return with the others. Tommy remembers that he was beside himself with panic and that Danny, Freddie and Barney took turns keeping watch over him to keep him from climbing out into No-Man’s Land and getting his head blown off searching. Days passed and Tommy had just about given up hope and was mentally preparing himself to write to Polly and Ada in Small Heath and Arthur in Gallipoli to tell them that John was gone when John sauntered back into the trenches, grinning like a mad fool with a French woman’s lipstick on his collar.

Tommy had almost strangled him.

He had felt so much back then. He remembers that he’d been nearly out of his mind that first night and that Danny and Freddie had spent the whole night holding him down, his face pressed into the mud until his sanity mostly returned with the dawn. An irrational part of him uses that as proof that this can’t be happening now. Surely if John was actually dead, Tommy would be out of his mind with grief, right? He’s spent most of his life making sure John stayed alive in one way or another, surely Tommy couldn’t be this numb if John was actually dead so that must mean that this is all a hoax of some kind. John’s alive.

Tommy knows that makes no sense; he saw John’s body, riddled with so many bullets it was like they’d never left France, but he’s incapable of forcing his mind to confront the truth. It’s easier to just retreat into the numbness and not think about it at all. It’s better like this, he tells himself, he can function like this. They have a war to fight after all.

There’s always another war to fight.

“Tom?” Ada probes, she’s stepped closer and puts her hand on his arm again. Her touch burns and he flinches away from it.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he repeats and flees deeper into the claustrophobic house before she can push any further.


End file.
